[Solved] CSA payments - a child with both parents

Hi Richard

You will both be entitled to maintenance from each other but the amount won't necessarily be the same as maintenance is worked out as a percentage of income. If you earn more than your ex then you will pay more.

If your youngest goes to live with her mother then she will be able to claim the child benefits etc. for that child.

You could try and reach a private agreement that neither of you would claim maintenance from each other. I think that would be the fairest way, but its whether you can both agree!

Once the oldest child starts Uni then maintenance would stop under CSA rules.

Hi Richard

Thank you for your post. I am William the Child Maintenance Options consultant. I will provide some information that may help answer your query.

Under the statutory rules, regular child maintenance payments must be made until a child is 16 years old, or 20 if they are in full-time, non-advanced education (A-level or equivalent), or for as long as Child Benefit is being paid. When a child leaves full-time education in the summer, Child Benefit generally continues until the first week of September. You can find more information on when child maintenance can stop on Gov.uk at https://www.gov.uk/when-child-maintenance-payments-stop.

To confirm what Nannyjane has mentioned, if your youngest child moves in with her mum, she may be eligible to receive child maintenance from you. In terms of your current Child Support Agency (CSA) arrangement, you may wish to contact the CSA directly for further clarification on how your child maintenance payments will be affected if there is a change in circumstances. You can find the contact details for the office that is dealing with your case on any letters that you may have received, or by visiting Gov.uk at https://www.gov.uk/child-maintenance/contact. You can also find more information on how the Child Maintenance Service works out child maintenance on the same site at https://www.gov.uk/how-child-maintenance-is-worked-out/how-the-child-maintenance-service-works-out-child-maintenance.

If your daughter does decide to move in with her mother, there a number of child maintenance options available to both of you. Again as Nannyjane has mentioned, often the best way of agreeing child maintenance is privately via a family-based arrangement. With this type of arrangement, there are no strict rules to stick to. Therefore, both you and your daughter’s mother have the freedom to decide the terms of your own arrangement, such as how much child maintenance will be paid.

A family-based arrangement can include money and other kinds of support, such as you directly paying for things that your daughter may need. Although family-based arrangements are not legally-binding, many parents prefer them because of their flexibility and ease of which they can be reviewed, such as if you or your daughter’s mother circumstances change. You can find more information on family-based arrangements on our website at http://www.cmoptions.org/en/family/index.asp.

We have a range of tools and guides on our website that may help you set up a family-based arrangement, should your daughter move in with her mother ( http://www.cmoptions.org/en/toolbox/index.asp). We have a discussion guide which you can use to help you plan your conversations around child maintenance. We also have a family-based arrangement form that is not a legally-binding document but if used to write down what both of you have agreed, it can help to formalise your arrangement.

To give you an indication of how much child maintenance that may be calculated if you were to use the Child Maintenance Service, we have an online calculator on our website at http://www.cmoptions.org/en/calculator/. Some parents use the figure provided as a starting point to negotiate a family-based arrangement.

If you are unable to set up a family-based arrangement with your children’s mother, you can make an application to the Child Maintenance Service (the CSA are no longer accepting new child maintenance applications). They use two schemes: Direct Pay and Collect and Pay. Both schemes are legally-binding.

Direct Pay is where the Child Maintenance Service will provide both you and your children’s mother with a child maintenance calculation and then allow both of you to decide the payment method (such as a standing order, cash or e-money transfer). After this, the Child Maintenance Service will make no further contact unless they are informed that payments have stopped or if there is a change in either of your circumstances.

If Direct Pay does not work, Collect and Pay can be used. This is where the Child Maintenance Service will calculate and collect payments from you and then forward them on to your children’s mother. If you decide to use the Child Maintenance Service, your responsibility to pay will be around the point when you are contacted by the Child Maintenance Service.

The Child Maintenance Service plans to introduce charges later this month. When charging is introduced, there will be an application fee of £20 to use the Child Maintenance Service. Applications made before then will not be charged this fee.

The best way to avoid charges is to set up a family-based arrangement and not use the Child Maintenance Service at all.

For parents using the Collect and Pay scheme the Government plans to charge collection fees to both the paying and receiving parent, this is for collecting and passing on child maintenance payments.

Under the Government’s plans, the paying parent would have to pay 20% in addition to the weekly maintenance payment and the receiving parent would have 4% taken away from the weekly maintenance payment. For further information you may wish to speak to the Child Maintenance Service directly.

The Child Maintenance Service can only confirm your actual collection fee amounts after you have applied to the Child Maintenance Service, and you will only have to pay collection fees if you are on Collect & Pay, after fees are introduced later this year. You can avoid collection fees entirely by using the Child Maintenance Service's Direct Pay service.

If you decide to make an application to the Child Maintenance Service, you will need to contact us first either by telephone or email, for your unique reference number. This number is personal to you. It is unique and shows that you have spoken to Child Maintenance Options before applying for a statutory child maintenance arrangement. You can find more information about using the Child Maintenance Service by visiting the Government website Gov.uk at http://www.gov.uk/child-maintenance.

If you feel that none of the above options will work for you, you could consider a Consent Order, or a Minute of Agreement if you live in Scotland. Both of these options are official rulings made by a court. To arrange a Consent Order or a Minute of Agreement, both you and your children’s mother will need to agree how much child maintenance will be paid and how often before going to court. This type of agreement is usually set up when both parents are going to court for other reasons, such as arranging a divorce or dividing assets. Arranging a Consent Order can be costly as fees for solicitors, mediators and court costs may apply.

For more information on the ways to set up child maintenance, please visit our website at http://www.cmoptions.org. Alternatively, you can call us free on 0800 988 0988 between 8am and 8pm Monday to Friday or 9am and 4pm on a Saturday. We have a sorting out separation web-app that you may find useful. It offers help and support to separating and separated families. The link is: www.dad.info/divorce-and-separation/sorting-out-separation.

Regards

William